Nuclear safety

A new NEA Working Group on the Regulation of New Reactors (WGRNR) has been established. The working group will address the regulatory aspects of the siting, licensing and regulatory oversight of generation III+ and generation IV nuclear reactors. The WGRNR will focus on construction inspection issues and share this experience with the other groups working under the aegis of the NEA Committee on Nuclear Regulatory Activities (CNRA). The WGRNR will also co-ordinate its activities with the work performed by the Multinational Design Evaluation Programme (MDEP) such that any duplication of effort is avoided. More information is available at www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/cnra/wgrnr.html.

An NEA workshop on the Role of Research in a Regulatory Context was held on 5 December 2007 at the NEA offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France. In the course of the workshop participants examined the safety research needs for reactors in service, under construction and in development. They concluded that the NEA Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) needs to develop a long-term strategy in this area. The CSNI strategy should identify the key safety and risk issues associated with particular design concepts, which of these issues require experimental data, and the infrastructure required to gather this data.

Nuclear development

Renewed interest in including nuclear energy in the energy mix of many member countries raises the question of potential raw material limits to nuclear energy growth. The NEA has therefore convened an ad hoc expert group to examine the issue. The expert group, which is comprised of representatives from NEA member countries, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency, will consider all materials required for the construction and operation of nuclear power plants and their associated fuel cycle facilities. Expert group members have already carried out a preliminary assessment by comparing global resource estimates with the requirements arising from a hypothetical tenfold expansion of nuclear generating capacity. The expert group is also investigating other sources of data on raw material inputs, with a particular focus on specialty materials used in nuclear fuel manufacture. Once a complete list of critical material requirements is compiled, simulations of the impact on raw material supplies under more realistic scenarios of nuclear capacity development will be performed. An assessment of material requirements for new reactor designs will also be undertaken with input from nuclear power plant vendors. More information is available at www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/limits.html.

Nuclear science

The NEA Working Party on Multi-scale Modelling of Fuels and Structural Materials for Nuclear Systems (WPMM) met for the first time on 15-16 January 2008 at the NEA offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France. The WPMM will review and evaluate the multi-scale modelling and simulation techniques currently employed in the selection of materials used in nuclear systems. During this meeting WPMM members shared past experience in developing models for assessing nuclear materials and identified a number of areas of study that they plan to explore further. More information is available at www.oecd-nea.org/science/wpmm/.

The fourth NEA workshop on the coupled neutronics/thermal-hydraulics transient benchmark for pebble bed modular reactors was held on 21-25 January 2008 at the NEA offices. Workshop participants were trained in the use of the new DIREKT computer code (which performs time-dependent, two-dimensional simulations of thermal-hydraulic transients in gas-cooled nuclear reactors) and the modelling of the benchmark. Participants also worked on a series of steady state and transient problems with solutions provided by several independently developed computer codes. More information is available at www.oecd-nea.org/science/wprs/pbmr400/.

A new Research and test facilities database (RTFDB) has just been launched on the NEA website. The database, set up by the NEA Expert Group on Needs of R&D Facilities in Nuclear Science, was established as part of the expert group's worldwide review of the status of research and test facilities in the field of nuclear science and technology. Information in the database was initially collected from the internet and other published sources before being verified by independent reviewers. The database is available at www.oecd-nea.org/rtfdb/.

Data Bank

Nuclear data services

The following nuclear data libraries have recently been added to the evaluated nuclear data (EVA) database:

The PADF-2007 and IRDF-2002 libraries are also available in the NEA-developed nuclear data display program JANIS. JANIS, now in its third release, is designed to facilitate the visualisation and manipulation of nuclear data. Its objective is to allow the nuclear data user to view numerical values and graphical representations without necessarily being familiar with the storage format. It offers maximum flexibility for the comparison of different nuclear data sets. More information is available at www.oecd-nea.org/janis/.

Computer program services

The NEA held a course on Analytical Benchmarks: Case Studies in Neutron Transport Theory on 30 January-1 February 2008 at the NEA offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France. The objective of the course was to give participants a grounding in the fundamental concepts of neutron transport theory, including recent theoretical and numerical advances in analytical benchmarking. Course participants included neutron transport method developers, teachers of reactor physics and neutron transport theory as well as several doctoral students. A list of the NEA courses in this field scheduled for 2008 can be found at www.oecd-nea.org/dbcps/.

The monthly bulletin only lists new and updated material. It is distributed by e-mail to registered users of the Nuclear Energy Agency's Online Services and is available online at www.oecd-nea.org/general/mnb/. Registration is free; please complete the form at www.oecd-nea.org/tools/mailinglist/register/.